www.reconciliationtalk.com

Changes coming

I have not posted much on ReconciliationTalk.com over the past few weeks Somehow after the US election was settled it seemed there wasn't a lot to write about! Did that mean that election of Barak Obama was the end of history?!!  For those too young to pick up the reference there, in an essay titled The End of History and the Last Man in 1989 Japanese American writer and thinker Francis Fukuyama suggested that the end of the Cold War and fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 marked the end, or maybe the beginning of the end, of the battle of ideologies. While I personally welcomed Obama's election I am nowhere close to suggesting that the end of the Bush era and the arrival of a very new approach to goverenment will usher in heaven on earth in the USA or the world.   

I have been thinking about it some. I guess its more to do with the fact that my enthusiasm for writing about the sort of things I had been writing about, particularly in the sort of way I was writing, was gone.  I realise I have not yet achieved what I wanted to achieve in ReconciliationTalk.com. So there will be some changes coming in coming days.

The blogging generation seem to make the mix between personal / social / ideas / work / travel / random stuff very natural. Just as the way many of this generation like to work has changed, so too the way they write about themselves and their world. Its a world view shift I am very comfortable with at one level, even though I am not a part of that generation, yet that I hadn't manage to incorporate that approach into a blog. I have had a personal family blog where I recorded personal stuff, and I had a comment blog (this one) where my thoughts belonged. The personal blog died of starvation a while ago, mainly as I invested far more time here, and yet this never got personal. And now this was was drying up!

Its a distinction I have regretted as the call I have to be a peacemaker originates out of a personal journey that doesn't really allow me the luxury of separating the areas of my life. I personally believe that for me my authority to comment on issues locally, nationally or even internationally is because of the walk I have in my relationship with different ones. Instead I have been pontificating on issues without really referencing my own call to those areas.

Of course there are difficult issues. Some of what I do is confidential. A lot is not strictly confidential but is not my story to tell. Some stuff is not yet ready to tell. And often my life wanders outside the remit of this blog. We will see how it goes.

I have been looking at my favourite blogs again to see how they do. I am not going to list them all. Maybe sometime soon I will actually get to have a list of the blogs I read regularly. For now I will mention just one. Bishop Alan's Blog  is the work of Alan Wilson, the Church of England Bishop of Buckingham. He consistently delievers a rich and varied tapestry of material drawn from his life and ministry, and his comments are often profound. He -- and many others -- represent the best examples I will be looking at as I seek to write more personally, less presumptiously, and sometimes with more variety.

Watch this space!! We must be talking pictures, more lively layout, etc!

'Lessons in Disaster - McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam'

This would seem to bea lesson that all intending promoters of a war should read:

Book Review - 'Lessons in Disaster - McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam,' by Gordon M. Goldstein - Review - NYTimes.com

How McGeorge Bundy, a key architect of the Vietnam War, began an agonized search to understand himself.

.... Bundy [equivalent to national security advisor to President Kennedy and Johnson] spoke only occasionally about Vietnam after he left government, but when he did, he supported the war. Yet it haunted him. He knew his own performance in the White House had fallen far short of his own exacting standards, and Halberstam’s devastating portrait of him disturbed him far more deeply than most people realized. After remaining largely silent, — except for an occasional defense of the two presidents he had served — for 30 years, Bundy finally began, in 1995, to write about Vietnam. He chose as his collaborator Gordon Goldstein, a young scholar of international affairs. Together they began mining the archives, and Goldstein conducted a series of probing interviews. Bundy began writing tortured notes to himself, often in the margins of his old memos — a sort of private dialogue with the man he had been 30 years earlier — something out of a Pirandello play. Bundy would scribble notes: “the doves were right”; “a war we should not have fought”; “I had a part in a great failure. I made mistakes of perception, recommendation and execution.” “What are my worst mistakes?” For those of us who had known the self-confident, arrogant Brahmin from Harvard, these astonishing, even touching, efforts to understand his own mistakes are far more persuasive than the shallow analysis McNamara offers in his own memoir, “In Retrospect.”

Sobering reading I would guess. Its on my wish list.

Building Bridges: conversation between Mona Siddiqui and Rowan Williams

A fascinating dialogue between a Chritian and Muslim:

University of Glasgow :: IT Services :: Archbishop.

Al-Qaeda vows to hurt Obama's US

This seems to me to be designed to provoke an angry reaction. Strength and grace to you Baracl Obama.

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Al-Qaeda vows to hurt Obama's US.

Zawahiri also criticised Mr Obama - whose father is Muslim - for betraying the Islamic world.

"You were born to a Muslim father, but you chose to stand in the ranks of the enemies of the Muslims, and pray the prayer of the Jews, although you claim to be Christian, in order to climb the rungs of leadership in America," he said.

Mr Obama was not an "honourable black American" like Malcolm X, he said, but an "abeed al-beit" - a word that translates as house slave but was rendered "house negro" in the message's English subtitles.

The audio was accompanied by footage of a speech by Malcolm X in which he distinguished between "field negroes" who hated their white masters and "house negroes" who, he said, were loyal to them.

"Faith speaks to Faith"

"... Faith speaks to Faith. That’s how you build understanding. That’s how schools help build community; and that’s where real hope lies. My Muslim parent did not want compulsory secularism shoved down their child’s throat as the only way, by people who won’t take responsiblity for doing this, and are sniggering at you behind their hands for believing anything more substantial than their own vapid secularism. ..."

With little tolerance for "vapid secularism", Bishop Alan in one of his usual wide-ranging and insightful posts, Hazlemere: Remembering, Learning , addresses the subject of Muslim children attending Church of England schools.   Or perhaps more accurately the attitudes and feelings of Muslim parents to the CofE schools their children are attending.

Two more quotes of note: "One Muslim parent told me how they appreciated their children to be somewhere God’s name was loved and honoured, so that their Muslim faith is simply respected, shared and nurtured as a way of life, rather than patronised or treated as an exotic hobby." 

The Bishop also tells how he asked another parent: “had they ever felt their children were being indoctrinated, narrowed or ghettoised by the experience of being in a faith school?” He records that the parent just fell about laughing! How wonderful.

Thank goodness for such remarks from a senior leader in the Church of England who neither overly romantic nor overly fearful of the other faith communities, especially Muslims, but instead reaches out to them warmly as residents of his diocese. His posts on Muslims  are always stimulating.

This is the season when we hear once again hear of calls for Christmas to be toned down so as not to offend anyone. Lets remember that last year the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and leaders of Muslim, Sikh and Hindu communities were all on record telling us to enjoy the Christmas season and that they do not find it offensive. 'Put Christ back into Christmas' And of course last year, as part of the developing Common Word exchanges, the Muslim community sent Christmas greetings to the Christian community:  A Muslim Message of Thanks and of Christmas Greetings 

 So what happens this year? Already Bishop Alan himself has recorded of how the story got out that Oxford had banned Christmas decorations: Winter Lights Oxford: hysterical tosh.  It was rubbish thank goodness, and the Oxford Mail noted that in its next edition. But its always the case that not everyone who read the original story reads the apology. So yet another few millimetres are added to the wedge of separation between us all, and the sense of loss of all that is ours by tradition is felt again by the Christian community.  

As Christmas approaches my hope is that the positive relations between Christians and Muslims that exist in so many places will be the story that is told across the media. Yet I fear the opposite will be true. But what is for certain s that many of our friends of other faiths will be enjoying Christmas. The final word goes again to the Bishop, who at the end of his Winter Lights Oxford: hysterical tosh post tells the story of a Muslim Butcher in Reading advertising "Halal Turkeys. Order now for Christmas." 

Wonderful!!

Luton, Muslims and a terror threat?

So this week brought another exposure of the threat we are facing at the hands of Muslim exemists. I was on holiday and off line so unable to note it until today.

The Telegraph has a secret government document leaked to them on Sunday: Report identifies UK terrorist enclaves. It was later carried on the agencies and apeared on the BBC, in one or two other British papers, and in one or two foreign papers. In the Daily Mail: British Al-Qaeda enclaves back jihad, according to leaked Government document.

Important to us of course was that Luton, where we live, work and seek to make peace was one of centres for plotting terror. 

That it wasn't covered more widely suggests a little bit of tiredness about the war on terror story. That it was covered by the Telegraph, the Mail and the Star says more; all regularly highlight the danger we are in due to Islamic jihadists and Muslim agendas to take over the nation.

Yes its of concern. I do not seek to play down the report at all. Undoubtedly there is truth to what is written. But does it make a difference to what I do. Not really. I continue to seek to build friendship with as wide a sector of the Muslim community of Luton as I can. I want to build trust. I want to do anything I can to pull down the barriers of trust, the stones of offence that cause people to be radicalised. I will work harder and pray harder I guess.

Do such reports help. From my perspective no. They reinforce the stereotyping of my town as crap, home of radicals, forsaken. They breed further alienation because of the outcry they provoke. I am tempted to not even comment on this story. My being away gave me every reason to miss it. It doesn't help me.  But I know I will be asked to comment and so I write. 

Those actively commited to terror are a few. They survive because of the support of a larger number ideologically commited to Jihad. A larger number of angry, disenfranchised  understand why they do what they do; they may voice radical ideas but they are not ideologically commited. A larger number just keep silent; they occasionally voice the words of the radicals because they are convenient. More still just get on with life. And many are actively moderate. A pyramid wiht a few active at the very peak. 

 However all are bound together to some degree by loyalty for the Ummah, the Islamic community. (And before we criticise Christians do that.)  Push them and they cohere tighter. (its a human response, to find comfort with those who share our deepest values!) Respond in fear or anger, shut doors, disengage from relationships, and the active peak of the pyramid grows in number as the activist threshold lowers.  Love them, engage with them and they open (nothing suprising there either!) and the activist threshold is tightened.

Jesus taught us to love our enemies. I can think of no better advice. We are told by the Apostle John that love drives out fear. It does. So we will keep on loving and see what happens.

Islam According to Gallup | Christianity Today

Some common sense abour Islam - or at least one take on Islam.

Islam According to Gallup | Christianity Today.

For the record, and I believe of profound importance to the way the olrd goes, this is my own personal  experience of Muslims.

Listening and Learning in the Middle East

What it means to act as an advocate for global engagement

Listening and Learning in the Middle East | Christianity Today.

Lynn Hybels reports from a gathering to "listen to the church in the Middle East."

"... nothing could have prepared me for the gut-wrenching emotional impact of looking into the eyes of these Christian brothers and sisters and hearing their history of pain, their sense of being abandoned by Western Christians, and yes, their righteous anger. Try to put yourself in my place as I listened to these heartbreaking stories. ...."

Read the article for the stories. Here was her conclusion:

.... On the last day of the conference, I sat at a desk in the middle of a classroom and wept. After the session, an Egyptian pastor embraced me and whispered, "Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your tears."...

Lynn Hybels and her husband Bill started their church by listening:

Hybels and other leaders began dreaming of forming a new church. They surveyed the community to find out why people weren't coming to church. Common answers included: "church is boring", "they're always asking for money", or "I don't like being preached down to." These answers shaped the group's approach to the new church. (Bill Hybels in wikipedia)

Willow Creek is now one of the largest churches in the USA. So it figures doesn't it-  you listen when you go to the Middle East. Why don't more people invest a little in the art of listening?

Too many Christian-Muslim dialogues, Vatican says

Great facts here!  But not sure the perspective here is quite right; the more talking the better!  

Too many Christian-Muslim dialogues, Vatican says | World | Reuters.

I suppose its all about where you want to go with it.

Rudd and Obama - walking a similar path?

I noted the other day that I was getting a number of hits on this blog via Google searches around the words "obama + peace + antichrist".  I am also noticing a regular run of searches this past few days on the theme of Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister of Australia's apology to the Aborigines, the First Peoples of the land in February this year. Kevin Rudds Sorry Speech. 

I wonder why?!!

( For a century, from 1869 until the early 1970's Aboriginal children were removed from their families to government and missionary schools for reasons of "protection", white racial purity, etc. Buried for many years, the plight of the Stolen Generations  became of increasing prominence during the 1990's and was highlighted by the 1997 Bringing Them Home government inquiry and 2002 movie The Rabbit-Proof Fence. The Prime Minister of the time, John Howard, refused to do anything, saying "Australians of this generation should not be required to accept guilt and blame for past actions and policies." The issue did not go away and Rudd made it a campaign promise to make an apology for this sorry period of Australia's history a priority for his new administration. He followed through on that promise and both sides of parliament joined him in the apology, though with many individuals of the opposition continuing to protesting the wrongness of such an apology.)

... The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia's history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.

We apologise for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.

We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.

For the pain, suffering and hurt of these stolen generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.

To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.

And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.

We the parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation. ....

Of relevance to the moment, Rudd has also overturned a number of John Howards unpopular international policies by signing the previously unratified (by the Australian) Kyoto Protocol  and working to withdraw Australian troops from Iraq. He is also an acknowledged authority on China, speaking Chinese fluently.

Some of the parallels with the USA seem immediately obvious. Barack Obama stands alongside Rudd as a new breed of leader. Both express a desire to engage with the issues of the Iraq War and Climate Change that have left their respective nations deeply compromised in the international community. And their election brings great opportunity to deal with the deep rifts in the social fabric of their nations that have resulted from huge past wrongdoing. 

Of course Obama stands on the other side in respect of the injustices to Blacks in his nation. His is not to apologise. However the humility of forgiveness can be as powerful as the humility of apology. His ease and graciousness in dealing with people of all colours is already noted. I pray he is prompted and able to make keynote speeches and take some initiatives that cement this healing of America's historical wounds.

This season offers an intriguing opportunity for a new beginning, at home, in the economic sphere, and around the world. I guess those seeking out Rudd's speech on Google have noted that. I certainly have. It has been noted many times over the past week Obama faces major challenges and he cannot to let them drift by a day. I wonder if a journey that reviews his own nation's history in a healing way, and that reviews recent history before and after the dreadful events of 911 in a reconciliatory way would win him some time as well as a lot of friends. Let's pray for Barack Obama as he walks towards his inauguration.